Bury Me(33)

Her body is wracked with sobs, her shoulders shaking with the force of her cries, each breath out of her mouth punctuated with whimpers and mournful whines.

“My perfect, beautiful daughter. I can’t do this anymore. It hurts too much. You need to find him. You need to talk to him. You’ll see him, and you’ll understand. It will all make sense then,” she cries.

“I need to find who? Dr. Thomas?” I ask, vomit rising up my throat as soon as I speak his name, the name Dr. Beall said to me, the one my mind wouldn’t let me remember just moments ago when I woke up. It flies off my tongue with ease, and I hate it. I hate the name. I hate the person. I don’t want to remember.

Go away, go away, go away!

“He only did what we asked. We thought it was right. We thought it would make everything better,” she whimpers.

My hands come up to my head and my fingers clutch tightly to my hair, yanking it as hard as I can until the pain brings tears to my eyes. I need the pain. I need the hurt. It’s the only way I can think clearly. Nothing she says makes any sense. She’s talking in circles, and I want to scream in frustration.

“I always loved the picture your father has of our family that sits on the desk in his office,” she says in a faraway voice, her crying coming to an abrupt end as an eerie smile takes over her face. “The picture tells the truth. It knows all the secrets.”

Maybe I really am crazy and I inherited it from my mother. She is out of her mind.

Her eyes meet mine across the bed, and as I stare into them, I see nothing but glazed-over emptiness. I’m not even sure if she realizes the crazy things she’s said to me or if she’s so far gone that they all make sense in her twisted mind.

“I can’t live without you. I can’t pretend anymore. I need to be wherever you are but I don’t even know where that is,” she complains, her eyes staring right through me. “He lies. He lies, and he lies, and he won’t tell me, but I deserve it. He tried to fix what I did but it didn’t work. I’m you, and you’re me. We’re so alike that no amount of lying can change that. No more pain, no more lying. Talk to the picture, and listen to what it says.”

My mother sniffs loudly and swipes away the last of her tears. She wraps both hands around the gun to hold it steady, out in front of her body.

I let go of the mattress and drop my arms to my sides. I refuse to close my eyes. I want her to suffer as she stares into mine, the exact same shade of emerald green as hers. I want her to watch the life she gave me vanish from my eyes, and I want it to kill everything inside of her, knowing that this is all her fault.

“I love you, Ravenna. I love you more than you could possibly imagine, and I’m so sorry. We’ll be together again soon. Wait for me.”

Faster than I can take my next breath, she bends her elbows back, sticks the end of the gun in her mouth, and pulls the trigger. My hands fly up to cover my ears but I’m not fast enough. The loud explosion in such a small space rings through my ears, and I wince in pain, pressing my palms as hard as I can against the side of my head to make the pain stop.

My eyes are glued to my mother’s lifeless body until she slumps to the ground and disappears from sight on the other side of my bed. My gaze slowly tracks up the wall where she was standing just moments ago, stopping at the hole at the top of my bedroom window where the bullet must have gone after it exited the back of her head.

The room suddenly fills with bright light, illuminating every corner of the room, the dark shadows no longer able to hide what happened in here. I drop my hands from my ears, and my father’s screams suddenly surround me. I feel his hands wrap around my arms as he jerks my body around to face him, but my eyes never leave the hole in the window. I stare in fascination at the dark, wet splatters of dripping blood and pieces of my mother’s brains as they slide down the glass and splat on the floor.

“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and my mother is dead.”





Chapter 13





“You’re sure you’re okay that your dad didn’t want to have a funeral?”

With my legs dangling over the end of the dock, I kick them lazily back and forth, staring at my reflection in the water below.

“What would be the point, Nolan?” I ask with a shrug. “It’s not like we have any family that would attend. My parents were both only children and my grandparents have been dead for years. My father also didn’t really want to advertise the fact that my mother swallowed a bullet. Not very good for the perfect little reputation he’s built around here.”